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Transport drives emissions up

Freedom to move is in Europeans’ DNA. It allows Slovaks to eat Spanish strawberries in winter, Brits to jet off for stag parties in Estonia and Polish builders to move to Ireland (and back again). But making it easier to get from A to B has a sting in the tail; greenhouse gas emissions from transport are going up and if this trend goes unchecked, it could derail the EU’s climate change goals.

The European Commission is increasingly alarmed about the gap between the EU’s climate goals and the growth in emissions from transport. The long-term goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80% by 2050 has been endorsed by the European Parliament, the Commission and (more tentatively) by EU environment ministers. But even if all the other parts of the economy – heavy industry, power companies, farmers and householders – do their bit, the target may still not be met because of transport. This gloomy outcome makes two assumptions: that the transport sector does nothing to reduce its pollution and that the rest of the economy will shoulder the burden of emissions cuts and allow transport to carry on polluting. Neither is plausible.

Legislation

To counter the risk of doing nothing, the Commission’s environment department is exploring how transport can do its fair share towards meeting the 2050 target. This is certain to end in legislation, with a new package of transport laws – including emissions performance standards for lorries – presented during the next Commission, a senior environment official told a private seminar in Brussels last week.

Jacqueline McGlade, the director of the European Environment Agency, thinks it is time to abandon the “laissez-faire attitude” that transport will voluntarily reduce emissions. Although the rate of growth in transport emissions has dipped with the recession, the overall trend is still pointing in the “wrong direction” said McGlade.

“Trends in transport…will continue to contribute to air pollution, rising emissions of greenhouse gases and many negative environmental impacts,” she said. McGlade advocates mandatory emission-reduction targets for transport, potentially mirroring the target of a 20% reduction in carbon dioxide that the EU has already agreed.

Jos Dings of Transport and Environment, a campaign group, also favours specific targets for transport. If that does not happen, he fears that the parts of the economy not covered by the emissions trading scheme (agriculture, buildings, transport) will blame each other in the event of failure to meet the overall target.

Energy-intensive industries are keen to see how the pain of reducing emissions can be shared.

“It is unfair that the steel industry reduced its CO2emissions by more than 20% between 1990 and 2005…while other sectors outside and inside the emissions trading scheme have done little or nothing,” said a representative of the European Confederation of Iron and Steel Industries.

The European Chemical Industry Council has begun to study the potential for cuts in costs and emissions in its logistics and the Commission sees energy-intensive industries as potential allies in the push to make the transport sector to do more. But the rest of the economy is implicated in the surging demand for transport – all those lorries, planes, cars and trains are going somewhere for a reason.

So would transport-specific targets help? They get a cool response from the International Road Transport Union (IRU), the pan-European organisation representing hauliers and coaches. Transport targets are not a good idea, said IRU’s Marc Billiet, because the “different transport modes are very different from one another”.

And he rejected the suggestion that transport was not doing its bit. “Why not starting tackling bigger polluters than road transport?” he said, singling out electricity companies.

Environment analysts retort that maintaining the status quo is not enough and action to reduce emissions from different modes of transport is being swallowed by the growing demand for transport.

Picking a winner

Action to manage the demand for transport will not be easy to achieve at EU level. Getting people out of their cars and on to public transport, encouraging ecologically-sensitive driving or planning towns so that pedestrians benefit more than cars are measures that lie within the competence of national and municipal governments. The scope for EU action is more on the supply side, covering fuel and the type of vehicles arriving on the market.

This raises a dilemma for the Commission: should it pick a technological winner? It has usually shunned such an approach.

The car market exemplifies the conundrum. If transport is to reduce emissions, cleaner cars will be needed. Cars fuelled by hydrogen, electricity, biofuels or some combination of all of three have been touted as vehicles of the future but have so far failed to dent the supremacy of the traditionally- powered internal-combustion engine.

McGlade would like to see the Commission boost the development of electric cars. The electric car of today produces 80 grams of CO2 per kilometre, which could fall to less than 30g/CO2per km by 2030, according to Eurelectric, the pan-European body that represents the electricity industry. Albeit indirectly, electric cars are still responsible for emissions, which simply move from the tailpipe to the smoke stacks of power generators. But the reduction in emissions is striking when compared to conventional cars, with their current average of 160g/CO2 per km and hopes of reducing that to 95g/CO2 per km by 2020.

Unsurprisingly, the electricity industry supports the idea of electric cars. Gunnar Lorenz of Eurelectric said the Commission should fund the testing of electric cars and their infrastructure and should promote research into the development of cheaper, lighter and more reliable batteries. He said that such funding would create “a level playing-field” with hydrogen technology, which has already received heavy subsidies. But he said that even with public support, by 2020 electric cars would still be only a “niche market”. Dings was more sceptical about electric cars. He said that even by 2030 they would not be widely used and he would like to see measures to reduce the energy use of vehicles and to ‘decarbonise’ fuel.

The European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) is anxious that the Commission does not back just one type of technology. “Legislators should not discriminate or prescribe,” an ACEA spokesperson said, emphasising the range of tried, partly tried and un-tried technologies. “Some are more ready for market than others. Some may not yet be known.”

Preserving ease of movement in the single market without wrecking the EU’s climate goals will be one of the major problems for the next Commission. It is readying itself to take a more aggressive approach to reversing emissions from transport. But it will face some difficult questions about how to influence the market and about which actions will be effective.